


take the long way round

by anticute



Series: you cannot walk among us [2]
Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: 'cause cardan's enigmaticness has somehow dragged me back into ficcing., F/M, anyway, i accidentally almost tagged cardan duarte, introspective, set: during/post twk, twkspoilers, which
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 21:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17968670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticute/pseuds/anticute
Summary: He knows what she desires, aspires, respires for, day and night.But: she is mortal, mortal, mortal, and she needs to be reminded.





	take the long way round

**Author's Note:**

> it’s been YEARS since i’ve properly written fic, so i’m stumbling having to relearn my process. which, apparently, now involves exploring chara in form of song, and that inspires fic. really it was just supposed to be a fanmix, and then i ended up ficcing. it’s all very confuddling. my only hope these days is i get to write about jude soon. 'cause sure, i love cardan's angst over his nightmare girl, but like - i love my murder daughter so much and i want to be able to write all the things for her.
> 
> this is one half of a really unintended two-part project, but here we are - half-fic, [half-fanmix](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17870459).

At first, it was entertaining, watching the comedy (of nonerrors) that was Jude, as she flit from one place to another, holding her court from - and Of - the shadows. Exeunt Jude one moment, Enter Jude in the next, with a command or other, only to then disappear once more. Irksome, intoxicating, in the way that is between them.

But it is all something else entirely, when he begins seeing how her plans are falling out of place. She is making missteps, which will have its untold costs on herself, on him, on Elfhame itself.

Of the human realm, he knows of this certain poetry. Humpty Dumpty, and how all the King’s men couldn’t put him together again. 

* * *

And so, they’re bound now. Husband, Wife. Boy-king, Girl-queen. He’s a left-side sleeper; she, he learns, doesn’t have a preference.

(With her cheek pressed against his/her pillows, she had admitted quietly: once, after a particularly grueling day, she had simply fallen onto her bed, across her made sheets, only to wake and find that she had not moved over the course of the night. He replied that he knew that her times of rest had been few and far between of late.

As she dozed off, he resisted tracing the edges of the shadows under her eyes.)

Her breath is warm against his arm, her every exhale a puff of deep, restful sleep. And he feels it. In the air, the cluster of clouds that are gathering, heavy, as dawn breaks. 

There is a low hum in this stillness, the way that morning can be, but the hour(s) weighs on him. His mind buzzes, a pendulum between thought and action, doubt and resolution.

She snores.

From the crack of his/her window, curtains half-drawn, a breeze carries out the fragrance of yesternight's flowers. The concentrated redolence of all that bloom - dissipating.

Then, Cardan picks up on the low and fervent commotion beyond the doors, and the shuffle of feet in the change of his guard.

He shifts his head slightly, eyes her/his ruby ring fastened around her human finger, the crusted blood curved under the nail, the faint vein across the flat of her inner forearm.

Before leaving their bed, he twines his finger around a curl of her hair for a breath’s second, and no more than that.

* * *

She has done too much, and much has been done to her. He doesn’t deny his continual part in this.

But better her exiled, than expired, dirt to dirt.

Time is both friend and shared enemy, among…others, and this is the only way he can conceive. (Perhaps it's presumptuous of him to know what's best for her. But...  _Well._  She's inspirational, what can he say. A muse of sorts, to add to her cache of identities.)

He needs time to rule. If it also allows him to reconcile who she is, and what’s she done, and this unending want of her - for her, and also to _throttle_ her - so much the better.

And Jude - Jude needs to  _take_  time.

In Cardan's faltering moments, he reminds himself of the faint smell of his brother's iron on her, nearly veiled by his fresh flowers and the sweet evergreen overhead. 

(She wore blood to bed.)

He also remembers the ripe red of her leg, a violent contrast to the silver of her dress. How that dress hung on muscles, the sinews and joints of her very frame when she was recovered. The way her eyes, normally alert and sharp, struggled to hold onto even the simplest linears of conversation - and only by sheer characteristic force did she push herself through.

He knows what she desires, aspires, respires for, day and night.

But: she is mortal, mortal, mortal, and she needs to be reminded.

* * *

He is also, as ever, self-serving. 

The crown is his, and she made that happen to him. But the crown is now  _his_.

(He watched on, the slopes of her shoulders, the profile of her tempestuous glare, as she turned away - amend that, be taken away, by his own order.  Exeunt Jude once more, and he - once Spectator, turned Actor.)

The thing of it is this: the crown is  _constant_. The mental grind to keep it, to really dig his hands into the want and keep of it. He is fragments, of his past, present, and he has to forge these sums of himself for what is to come.

He is the fool, sedated in all his aims and airs, which allowed him to survive, particularly under Balekin’s thumb.

He is a maelstrom of checked emotions. He is angry at her still - for reasons of this current of almost-war, and whatever family Balekin was to him.

He is also angry, at himself, about that in of itself. Yes, he never wanted Balekin dead, he all but begged her. But, it was still  _Balekin._  Balekin, now truly gone; but his own scars ever present, forevermore. (And if it was down to a matter of choice-)

He is the easy glutton that indulges and seeks gratification in all his various appetites, and the court is only eager to please.

(-judejudejudejudejudejudejudejude).

(And that. That is also exhausting. That he is still yet hers.)

He is king, which he never wanted to be, and is now finding himself to be. It is easier than he thought it would be. Not that it is  _easy_ , but easier.

It is not so easy when doubts seek audience in his mind constantly:

He does and does not want the crown. The crown does not want him, but it has few options between him and a child. He has to laugh at that. Everyone must be laughing. He falls asleep, and wakes, with a laugh. He will fall. He will thrive. He will make no mark.

He will leave Faerie in ruins.

Unbidden, and not entirely unwelcome, there’s the voice in his head, that is his seneschal. It finds him, or he finds her, and that is  _maddening._

He carries on as the crown.

She will return, of that he is certain. (Oh, but the Doubts make their petitions here too. He does and does not want her. She will never have him again, like others before her. He falls asleep, and wakes, with a laugh.)

With each constant beat of his heart, he hopes that he’ll find his own voice before then.

(He can practically taste her schemes, paces and paces away.)


End file.
